1st Grow - Rubbermaid Tub Cali Orange

Hi Everybody.

This is my first post here and I have decided to begin a journal on my very first grow. I'm going to warn you now I have used my phone's camera and pictures might not be top notch. Some might be a bit too big too. I am slightly too lazy to resize. Sorry bros. I'll work on that for the future.

It's taking place in a rubbermaid grow box that I found the outline for here:
How To - Rubbermaid Tub Growbox

I changed a few things like giving quite a bit more passive intake than he recommends. He recommends half the passive intake surface area as your fan. I decided to go closer to ~2.5 times the surface area for my passive intake as to not bust my fan. (Already went through one after listening to that bullshit and waiting to do research afterwards. Ended up robbing one from my girlfriend's computer on the fly. ) It's surprisingly hard to find a straightforward answer to this online.

If anyone comes to this from google for that answer, go at LEAST 2 times if not 3. You'll still have negative pressure.

Here's a picture of the grow box on the outside:


And on the inside:



You might notice I forgot one 90 degree bend. I went to the store and forgot how many holes I made. Fixing that for flowering though.
Typical aluminum foil tape. Might be a half-assed job, but that shit is hard as fuck to work with, and it cuts your fingers up.
I'm not very worried about hotspots.

The lights I have running currently for veg are on 18 hours and off for 6. There are 6 26W CFLs, 3 2700k and 3 6700k (I cheaped out because I got 6 2700Ks for the flowering). I put something under the plant to keep it about 4 inches away from the lights which I am happy with.

I found the light fixtures on sale for 1$ at Wal-Mart? Wtf? Anyway, bought an extension cord while there too (switched the packaging with a shit cord to pay 5$ for it - suck it Wal-Mart).

The fan is a typical 4.5" 12V 0.30A computer fan mounted just above the lights.

Picked up the seeds from a random smoke shop in town named Things. Paid 60$ for 10 "Willy Jack" California Orange seeds. Better than bagseed. "If you don't know Willy, you don't know Jack."


I went to the local hydroponics store, not really knowing what to get, and got some of this:

Sun Gro Horticulture | Products
Apparently it's pretty hard to find some good stuff in Canada in the winter, but from what I have seen this stuff does the trick.

Also saw the Technaflora Recipe for Success Starter's Kit there for 50$ so I picked that up. The separate pieces for this at this store would have amounted to much more.

Technaflora


I don't have any more room for a larger flowering area so I plan to just grow one plant at a time in this motherfucker, LST STYLE. I started a seedling 8 days ago. Tossed his ass in between some damp paper towel and 2 days later magic happened. Then began his journey in the solo cup of joy.

Being the cheap piece of crap I am, I got resourceful and made a hand-sprinkler out of an old rum quart bottle. To do this I just put 8 relatively small screw holes around the cap. Works pretty good, but I'll probably need to upsize when (/if) the plant gets bigger.

Also I mist the leaves every 4-6 hours just cause I dunno.

Here's a picture of the little bitch like 9 days after starting germination, the brighter picture taken under the CFLs and the darker picture taken in a typical incandescent lit room:



You can't really see them in this pictures but the second pair of leaves have started growing just above the cotyledons. They are about 3 mm long now. It's also hard to tell how far up from the soil they are - about a centimeter. Nice n' short.

Here is a pic from today, 9 or 10 days after seed germination began:


I honestly have no idea but I think he seems to be doin' alright. Green as hell anyway.

I am thinking the next watering perhaps I should start nutes at 1/4 strength? What do you guys think?

I'll probably keep this updated pretty frequently. Please let me know what you think and/or if you have any comments or suggestions!

I have been skeptical about building a homemade growbox but I am definately going to after seeing both of these. Doesnt get much more stealth than rubbermaids in a room full of our old stuff stored in rubbermaids... keep the pictures coming I am interested to see how this turns out.

Edit: Sorry for reviving an old thread but how did this turn out?